CIA Iraq Iran-Contra

Judge Warns White House
About Erasing Computers*

i/jTm rrh ^ ' —

' By George Lardner Jr.

Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge yesterday rejected a last-
minute Bush administration attempt to be-
gin destroying most computerized White
House records and warned in a sharply
worded order against any effort to evade his
mandate.

j The National Security Council had been
planning to start erasing the records on its
computers today in order to provide a
“clean slate for the incoming administra-
tion” of President-elect Clinton, according
to court papers.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey
ordered the National Archives last week to
i prevent the erasure of NSC data and other
computer records in the Executive Office of
the President, but the administration asked
for a stay of the ruling. Justice Department
lawyers, representing the White House,
contended that the court was impeding “the
present administration’s ability to leave of-
fice with its records dispatched to appro-
priate federal document depositories con-
sistent with the law.”

Calling that argument “incomprehensi-
ble,” Richey said there was an important
I difference between paper copies of White
l House computer messages, memos and
electronic mail and the electronic records
“because the paper copies do not necessar-
I ily disclose who said what to whom and
I when.

“The electronic version of these materi-
als contains this information,” Richey ob-
served. “As a practical matter,” he added,
“one does not have to know much about
computers to know that saving this [elec-
tronic] information is not going to bring the
government to its knees and that it is re-
quired by law."

Administration lawyers have indicated
they intend to appeal the ruling to the U.S.
Court of Appeals today.

“They’ve made it clear that they don’t
want to leave anything behind,” said Mi-
chael Tankersley, a Public Citizen lawyer
representing the plaintiffs in the case.

The dispute is an outgrowth of a Free-
dom of Information suit brought four years
ago by Scott Armstrong; the National Se-
curity Archive, a public interest repository
j of government records that Armstrong

used to head, and others. Computer records
of the Reagan White House already are cov-
ered by existing orders, and the Bush White
House is seeking to destroy only those it
generated.

Spokesmen for the White House and the
National Security Council did not respond to
telephone rails seeking comment.

"■ ■ ■ '

“It’s kind of ironic,” Tankersley said.
“The Bush people say they’re happy to save
the Reagan stuff, but they refuse to save
the same stuff from their own administra-
tion. It’s kind of a double standard.”

Richey emphasized that nothing in his
orders covers President Bush’s personal
papers and any other presidential or “non- .
record material.” He said his ruling would :
prevent deletion or erasure only of elec- :
tronic records of the NSC and other White :
House units, such as the Office of Manage- :
ment and Budget, that have been held to be.:
“federal records” under judicial control.

Voicing fears that his ruling might be :
skirted in some way, the judge said he was .
“not satisfied” that all “federal records” in :
the White House computers would be pre- :
served, in part because of “inconsistencies" ;

“ The Bush people say
they're happy to save the \
Reagan stuff, hut they
refuse to save the same \
stuff from their own
administration. ”

— Michael Tankersley, Public Citizen lawyer

in the administration’s representations to-
the court and in part because the White-
House intends to rely on its own staff rather i
than archivists to decide what to save and '
what to erase. I

The White House has agreed “in part” to.
abide by the court’s orders pending appeal:
by preserving computer material on backup
tapes, but the administration has not set out
clearly “when backup tapes would be made
or have been made,” Richey added.

He said the White House would shoulder
a “heavy responsibility” if officials fail to
preserve all the records covered by his or-
der. He noted that some Reagan-era backup
tapes already have been recycled “and the
information on them lost” in violation of a
1989 order. “Allowing a stay,” Richey con-
cluded, “will only frustrate the cause of jus-
tice.” ■

Armstrong said he feared the White
House was going to exploit the “presidential
record exception” to cart off far more than
is justified. “It’s unclear to us the Clinton
people understand what’s going on,” he
said. “They may be losing the institutional
memory of the NSC and other executive
offices, and they may not realize that this
[lawsuit] applies to them too.”